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SERMON 



DELIVERED AT BENNET STREET CHURCH, 



IN BEHALF OP THE 



AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY, 



JULY 47 1830. 



BY REV. JOHN NEWLAND MAFFITT, 

OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 



BOSTON:— E. W. CRITTENDEN. 
PRESS OF PUTNAM & HUNT. 
1830. 






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A PLEA FOR AFRICA. 



Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God. Ps. Ixviii. 31. 

The rise and fall of nations are sublime subjects for moral 
contemplation. The fabric of empire is composed of mind as 
well as matter ; and when the revolutions of destiny are permit- 
ted by Providence to encroach on nations, and resolve them in- 
to their original elements, the component parts still inherit the 
principles of vitality. Like those blocks of living marble dug 
up from Grecian ruins, these scattered fragments may be col- 
lected in some future day to build a nobler temple of domin- 
ion. 

History warns the powerftd to tread lightly on the oppressed. 
Let armies as countless as the locusts which overspread Egypt 
in the day of God's anger, pass over any given territory, tracing 
their march with the wildest havoc, and sweeping the bare soil 
to its very dust with the desolating cannon, — still let not the op- 
pressors triumph. In some secret cavern of the earth — in some 
untravelled glen — in some sunless gorge, a few miserable beings 



may shelter themselves until the blast of war has overblown. 
These may he the fathers of a great people, whose first work, 
in the great drama of Providence, may be that of a bloody ret- 
ribution. 

" Let not the oppressor triumph " — says a great voice from 
heaven. God abhors the proud. The sighing of the prisoner 
comes up before him. The robe of sackcloth is as beautiful in 
his eyes as the gorgeous attire of palaces — and the human form, 
furrowed with the task-master's whip, is as acceptable to its 
Maker, as the pampered and delicately beautiful countenance of 
him whom the winds of heaven have not been permitted to 
visit too roughly. 

The analogies of all conquered nations warrant these intro- 
ductory remarks. The conquered have in their turn become 
the conquerors — the slaves have become the masters — the harp 
hung on the drooping willows has lost its moaning sound, and 
in the renovated hand of its possessor has poured out the mar- 
tial song of the triumphing trumpet. What sight more deeply 
affecting to the sympatiiies of humanity could have been wit- > 
nessed than those spectacles of earth's deepest sorrow so often 
seen in the luxuriant vales of Palestine, when God had given 
up his chosen people into the hands of their enemies ? The 
sacked and smoking streets of the dear Jerusalem — oh, 
could they remain tliere ! would afford the miserable some me- 
mentoes of former happiness. The eye red with weeping 
might rest on some of the mighty stones of the first temple, or 
on some lonely monument crowned with a name dear to Judah, 
strong and immortal in death. But no ! — away over hill and 
valley, over brook and meadow — away over mountain and river 
these exiles, forlorn and w^eary and brokenhearted, must go, 
while over them hangs the strong probability, if not certainty, 
that the beautifiil places that had once known them should know 
them no more, l^roplul and King, Prince and Counsellor, the 
care-worn man (jfwar and the drooiJing virgin, chained together in 



ranks, with feeble age and infancy along, darkened ihy hills, 
Judea, more than once with their mournful procession, formed 
under the eye, and urged along by the spear of the Assyrian. 
No song is heard among these thousands; the inconceivable 
weight of national sorrow stifles and hushes the very groan — 
tears only, sad and hopeless ones, fall in silent showers on a soil 
soon destined to become sand under the blast of desert winds. 
Far north — to the cold waters of Babylon — go sit you down and 
mourn — yet not in quietness ; the task-masters scourge shall re- 
sound in your ears ; heavy burdens shall press you down ; your 
dehcately formed young men shall stand as menials in the courts 
of strange monarchs — and they that carry you away captive 
shall require of you mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of 
Zion. 

This picture of deep and immense national sorrow is one of 
truth — a retrospective one, copied from the pages of God's word. 
Yet a land so swept by the tempest of war, and so emptied of 
its dwellers, has, after a lapse of years, a solitary succession of 
winter and spring and summer and autumn, voiceless, desolate 
and dreary, heard again a "turtle-dove raise its sweetly melan- 
choly voice — and next an old man, who could just remember 
the day of the spoiler when he was a little boy, with tottering 
step, after a captivity of seventy years, traces with his staff the 
outline of city, temple and tomb, and calls upon the Lord God 
of Israel until the old echoes awake again in the hoary mountains,' 
and beat against the brazen heavens. Then comes a virgin 
along the valley, and as she lifts her song and takes her timbrel, 
the spring breathes over the land ; the verdure breaks forth ; the 
rose blushes beneath the rock ; Kedron murmurs once more 
over its shining pebbles ; the valley of Jehoshaphat is burdened 
with unwonted exuberance ; Bethlehem seems to smile above 
the ramparts of white rocks, and Jerusalem gathers around her 
stately form the clouds of power, while the crown of dominion 
begins to settle on her brow. 



After these views, 1 introduce the doctrine of my text, which 
is : — T/taf ivhile no nation can he reduced so low, xvithout en- 
tire exiermination as not to have hope of a future renovation, 
every nation must infallibly rise inpoiver and glory, to ivhom the 
mighty promise of God hath extended. 

It was the promise of Jehovah that brought his poor afflicted 
people from Egypt, where they had suffered the terrible evils of 
slavery. It was his promise that led the wanderers through a 
dry and thirsty land, and made their armies, when they at 
length invaded the land of Canaan, like the unbounded waves 
of the great sea, dreadful in their overflowing strength. A su- 
pernatural power walks abroad through that host where God's 
banner, all unseen to the faithless eye of the multitude, floats ' 
heavily and broadly before the undimraed eye of faith and 
heavenly confidence. — "/n tJmsign, I conquer,^^ smd Constan- 
line, Avhen a fiery cross was suspended in heaven — and thus, 
wbentlie Christian finds the promise of God pledged to the ful- 
filment of any ev^ent he places all his confidence there and acts 
as though the event had passed and become one of tlie records 
of history, or was even then passing before his e3'es in the full 
tide of its accomplishment. Faith has a power unknown to 
earth ; it rends the heavens, and takes fast hold of uncreated 
strength ; it uncovers the hiding place of futurity, and knows 
something of those great dispensations which are meted out 
in the strong j)romiscs and ihreatenings of the Holy One of Is- 
rael. When God has threatened, in years long gone by, to ex- 
terminate any nation and blot the last trace of their lineage from 
the face of the earth, the christian is not seen, like' the incredu- 
lous Scavant of modern times, raking in the dust of Tyre and 
Sidon, sacking the hollow and tenantless tombs to find one 
descendant of perished empire, to mock the promise and im- 
peach the threatening; of " iiim who cannot lie." Where God 



has spoken bis sweeping judgements against a nation, none need 
expect to find a drop of patrial blood in the veins of any one on 
the bosom of the earth. The explorer of long perished em- 
pires, in his frail boat on those purple waters where Tyre once 
sat down the "Queen of Nations," may look into the deep and 
find its bottom paved with broken columns, the carved and lus- 
tred marble of her day of pride; but let him ask the wandering 
Arab, or the fierce Beduoin, or the solitary fisherman who dries 
his net upon the wave-worn rocks, if they can trace their de- 
scent to a city which centuries ago frowned above these tossing 
waves in the sublimity of power — they shall shake their heads 
in astonishment, and answer — no. For their descent they will 
point far eastward to the desert. They know not the name of 
those sea-washed ruins, and have no tradition of departed em- 
pire to chant in hollow cadence to the beating of wild billows. 
The promise and the threatening of Heaven are alike cer- 
tain in their fulfilment. Where now are the proud millions of 
Babylon ? Where her Kings — her hundreds of provinces — her 
brazen gates — her lofty towers, and golden palaces ? They are 
no where to be found. Wind and water, war and earthquake 
have raged against the very earth on which its corner-stone was 
planted, until darkness and doubt brood over the bleak and 
desolate site. Perhaps this wonder of the world stood here, 
where the reedy sinuous Tigris steals along through a plain of 
boundless prospect — or perhaps the spot is indicated yonder by 
mounds of enormous bricks — or still farther on, where shaggy 
furze and stinted shrubbery hide from human eye the den ol the 
dragon, and the retreat of the desert serpent. There is no de- 
scendant of Babylonian Kings, of whom we may ask where the 
temple of Belus stood, or the awful city lifted up its battlements. 
Yet of a poor, peeled, despised nation, who once were slaves to 
Babylon the Great, hundreds of thousands now may be found 
scattered over the provinces of the earth. With ihcm hves the 



remembrance of ancient days, and the loved name of their own 
Jerusalem. Preserved by the promise, and obliterated by the 
threatening of Heaven's Majesty, I hold these two nations up 
before you, as spectacles of solemn import. The one indeed, 
is tlie shadowy, unsubstantial, ghostlike form of a deceased em- 
pire, slain by the curse of the Almighty; — the other, although 
scarred by the descending lightning, bleached by the bitter 
north winds, or scorched by the Siroc of the desert, is still a 
mighty form, through which a warm life-blood gushes, and to 
whom, eternal blessings that shall blend earth and heaven in a 
measureless flood of glory, are about to come through the ful- 
filling promises. 

I iiave lingered enough in the ancient world to fix the great 
truth in the minds of this respected audience, of God's faithful- 
ness in the fulfdmentof his national promises and national threat- 
enings. The day — the high occasion — the voice of liberty, 
echoing from tlie thousand hills of this favored land — and, alas ! 
the groans of millions, heard low and smothered, hkc the first 
moanings of an earthquake, call me to the momentous consider- 
ations of our own times. I come weeping and deprecating the 
wrath of Him, who goeth forth, at times, through the earth, 
making inquest for blood, and terribly shaking ,the guilty na- 
tions. Spare, Lord, in thy hot displeasure. Let the dark 
wing of vengeance linger awhile in the already gathered cloud. 
Let tlie red sword rest longer still in its scabbard. Frown not 
iqion this chosen people — for thy frown is death — extermina- 
tion. — Tiiy loving kindness is better than hfe ! 

Over against the southern part of our continent, divided from 
Europe by the Mediterranean sea, another continent stretches 
along, holding us in equipoise, like a weight in the opposite 
scale of the balance. This should be called the Monumental 
Continent, as it is a land whose every promontory, and every 
speaking, uiurnnuing river testify of wrong, of outraged hu- 



manity, of nature bleeding in immense agony through milhons 
of palpitating pores, and staining every land and discoloring 
every sea with gory blood. What hath Africa done, that her 
children should blacken beneath a heavier, more lasting curse, 
than ever rested on any other nation ! What hath she done to 
thee, great America, that thou boldest her sons, her daughters, 
her feeble infants in bondage, and refusest to let them go ? 
" Carthage must be destroyed,'''' was the Roman motto, when 
her Scipios drove the legions of Hannibal from the vine-cover- 
ed hills of Italy, back again to Africa — but the motto of the 
Christian world against every son and daughter of Africa, has 
breathed a fiercer and less tender spirit. To erase from being, 
is to inflict but a momentary pang — while to enslave generation 
after generation, from the earliest dawn of life's clouded day, to 
its dark going down, is to entail torture in such a fearful shape, 
as to make ii bear no imaginary similitude to everlasting wo ! 
Oh could we this day assemble the enslaved sons of Africa ! 
bring forward the millions free America holds in bondage, alike 
regardless of human or divine right — make the Indian islands 
give up their slaves, and Southern America yield her's — place 
them where the cool winds of heaven might fan their throbbing 
foreheads in the amphitheatre of your broadest valley ; for their 
numbers wouM throng a wide extent of territory- — and there 
Speak peace to all their troubles ! We would tenderly say — 
Bleeding Africans ! Your God remembers you. He did not 
account of you as dust trodden down to be carried away by 
every passing wind. He did not leave you without a promise. 
The mighty pulsations of joy could not be full in the mind of 
uncreated benevolence until, in the deep communions of His 
spirit with man. He had revealed Africa stretching forth her 
hands — her hands — for alas ! she hath worn manacles, and 
could not lift up her iron-eaten sinews to the avenger of na- 



10 

tions ! Oh, Africa ! this is the broad charter of thy coming 
frceilom — the promise of the Everhisting God. When human 
charters, that have attracted the admiration of the nations, shall 
cease to convey freedom in their tenure, thy charter shall be 
found fresh and undisputed in that book, so magnificendy de- 
scribed by Pollock in his " Course of Time " as being the 

" IVIost wondrous book ! bright candle of the Lord ! 

Star of eternity ! the only star 

By which the bark of man could navigate 

The sea of life, and gain the coast of bliss 

Securely; — only star which rose on time. 

And, on its dark and troubled billows, still. 

As generation drifting swiftly by. 

Succeeded generation, threw a ray 

Of Heaven's own light, and to the hills of God, 

The everlasting hills, pointed the sinner's eye." 

The quenchless fire of the Ethiopian eye, the tireless vigor 
of the African frame, the ardent temperament of nature, the 
maturity of the afFecdons in that fervid clime — all, all forbid, 
equally with the glorious promise of the Maker of all worlds, 
that Africa should be lost — should ring no paean to the praise of 
Almighty goodness, when the harmony of the redeemed nations 
goes iq) from earth to heaven. Who will dare chain a noble, 
a King, to whom empires are hastening to do homage ? Yet, 
O Africa, this nation of freemen have enslaved thy children 
and thy Kings ! , 

The day is past, when any attempt may be expected to vin- 
dicate slavery on philosophical or religious principles. It is a 
horrible wrong, unjustifiable, impeached by every noble feeling 
Uiat throbs die bosoms of the collective race of humanity. Is it 
possible diat the constituted authorities of a naUon so highly fa- 
vored as this — so exalted to heaven in point of privilege — 
should feel a single doubt as to a proper and most imperious ob- 
ject for the apjjropriation of natinnid revenue, when the over- 
llowirig treasury of the nation should demand a legislation for 
djc appropriation of such super abundance ! The war-ships of 
our hoavon-delivercd land — our eagle banner of victory — the 
one lo convey to dieir native shores, and the oUier to wave over 



11 

and shelter the long exiled sons of Ethiopia, would present the 
noblest imago of moral grandeur tiiat ever reflected on the 
glassy bosom of the great deep. After the national debt shall 
have been discharged, it will not be beyond the resources of 
America to relieve and return one fourth of a million of slaves 
annually, with safety to themselves, and most especially glorious 
to the country that shall institute such operations, to repair the 
measureless extent of wrong that has been inflicted, for genera- 
tions almost by the common consent of mankind, on an unof- 
fending people. 

I need not here repeat what has already been effected by the 
American Colonization Society. The transactions of this in- 
stitution are known to all. They are so full of benevolence 
and the hahowed impulses of Heaven's own mercy, that one 
might, with the propriety of truth, compare its radiant influ- 
ences to a rainbow, insufferably bright, spanning the sombre 
clouds of human wrong, that have accumulated on the horizon 
of our country's prosperity, and beating back, with calm and 
heavenly power, the blackening storm that always threatens, in 
growling thunders, a heavy retribution. 

" One of the earhest acts of the Society was to despatch a 
competent agent to Africa, to explore its coasts and the coun- 
tries bordering upon them, and to select a suitable spot for the 
establishment of the contemplated colony. The Society was 
eminently fortunate in the choice of its agent, as it has been, 
generally, in those whom it subsequently engaged in its service. 
A selection was finally made of a proper district of country, a 
purchase was effected of it from the native authorities, to which 
additions have been made, as the growing wants of the colony, 
actual or anticipated, required. The country so acquired, em- 
braces large tracts of fertile land, capable of yielding all the 
rich and varied products of the tropics, possesses great commer- 
cial advantages, with an extent of sea-coast from 150 to 200 
miles, and enjoys a salubrious climate, well adapted to the Af- 



12 

ricanconsliiiition, and not so fatal to the whites, as many sick- 
Iv parts of the United States." 

Within that district of country, the society founded its colo- 
ny, under the denomination of Liberia, established towns, laid 
off jilantations for the colonists, and erected military works for 
their defence. Annually, and as often as the ])ecuniary cir- 
cumstances of the Society would admit, vessels from the ports 
of the United States have been sent to Liberia, laden with emi- 
grimts, and with utensils, provisions, and other objects, for their 
comfort. No difliculty has been experienced in obtaining as 
many colonists as the means of the Society were competent to 
transport. They have been found, indeed, altogether inade- 
quate to acconnnodate all who were willing and anxious to go." 

'•'The colony contains, at this time, about sixteen hundred in- 
liabitants, emigrants from the United States ; the colonists, be- 
came acclimated and healthy — have erected comfortable houses 
for themselves and families, and necessary public edifices, and 
are |)ursuing diligently and thriftily their private vocations, culti- 
vating farms, following mechanical trades, or engaging in com- 
merce with the natives of the interior and along the coast. As 
a community, it has actjuired and maintains a character and in- 
fluence with the tribes or nations around it ; preserves order and 
•juiet within ; jirotects each in his rights of person and of proji- 
erly ; lias its courts, its militia, schools for the children of the 
colonists and of the natives, a jirinting-press, a newspaper, pub- 
fic library, churchos, and iVequcnt and periodical performances 
of divine service — in short, it presents, in a land of ignorance 
and depravity, of Paganism and Mahommedanism, tiie interest- 
ing and bright exhibition of an intelligent, moral and christian 
community." 

It must be seen in this ro\iew, 'hasty indeed and inadequate 
to the magnituilc of the subjecl, that allhough wonders have 
been acronqilisbed by the Society, its eflbrts notwithstaiuling 
arc lint sunicienlly iiowcrfid to diminish the r\\\ Id :my irrcal e\- 



13 

tent. The Society is wortliy of all praise, as it embodies near- 
ly all the energetic feeling that exists in our nation on the sub- 
ject of slavery. But the Herculean task is imposed on the 
wrong shoulders. Take it from those of spontaneous benevo- 
Jence and philanthropy, and place it on those of power and na- 
tional resources, and the feeble wrestlings of an infant with the 
monster slavery, would give place to the secure and effectual 
operations of full-grown manhood. It may be assumed as an 
undeniable position that the expenditures of ransoming and es- 
tablishing the two millions of our slave population on their na- 
tive continent would be less than the expenditures of a war that 
should have for hs object the extermination of two milHons of 
human beings. It costs less to save than to destroy. 

Christian America ! I must reluctantly, close my plea in 
behalf of enslaved miUions, by charging home upon the Cap- 
itol where the emblematic eagle spreads his broadest, boldest 
wing — upon every legislative hall in the slave-holding states 
— upon magistrate and people — upon army and navy — upon 
plain, mountain and river, the deep and as yet irreversible stain 
of slavery. The Genius of Columbia as she surveys from the 
loftiest peak of the Alleghanies, the azure field where the stars 
are sprinkled, has also in prospect the nebulous vapors that 
roll up heavily from the slave-cultured earth. The eye of 
Heaven is brighter than her's of the " stripes and stars" — and 
Heaven is all ear to record every extorted groan. The solemn 
demand in the high Chancery of Heaven against the beloved 
country of my adoption and tenderest love, will not be the price 
of what Africa now is — but of what she would have been, if 
her millions who have miserably perished in inhospitable climes 
hke branches rent from the parent tree, had remained on the 
shores of her Gambia, her Niger, and had from the genial in- 
flueaces of peaceful commerce, and the renovations of civiliza- 
tion, surpassed the grandeur of her once renowned empires. 
It is the ghost of a mighty people that points the fleshless hand 



14 

towards America — tlien, solemnly raising it towards heaven, 
says — " 1 will meet thee there — not at Philippi, in night and bat- 
tle agony, but at the bar of God, under the blaze of the judge- 
ment fires, just when the highest hills in heaven are reddening 
with tlie united flames of Africa and America. I will meet 
thee there, to ask for my kings and queens, my sons and 
daughters, my chies, my national renown — and for my eternal 
salvation !" 

Slowly, like one stiffened in death, the accusing spectre has 
vanished. It is for us, my beloved countrymen, — it is for us to 
lay this terrible spirit forever, that he accuse us nor at a mo- 
ment when all that have breathed on earth — " the world's gray 
faUiers" and the latest born shall be witnesses of our disgrace 
— when the hollowness of our boast of freedom shall provoke 
"the jeers of the world." 



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